EMMA ECCLES JONES, PHILANTHROPIST AND EDUCATOR, DIES AT 93

Emma Eccles Jones, 93, noted philanthropist, pioneer in early childhood education and the last surviving child of prominent Utahns David and Ellen Stoddard Eccles, died Friday, March 29, in her home in Piedmont, Calif.

The Eccles family moved to Logan when Mrs. Jones was a child. She attended Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah State University), Radcliffe College and Harvard University and received a degree in English from the University of California-Berkeley.She established the first kindergarten program in Logan in cooperation with another Utah education pioneer, Edith Bowen. In 10 years of directing the program, Mrs. Jones contributed her salary toward supplies. After the death of her husband, LeGrande Jones, in 1937, she moved to California and directed an innovative child-care program at Mills College.

She received a doctor of humanities degree from USU in 1985. A major contribution to the university, the Emma Eccles Jones Education Building, was dedicated in January 1990.

She was a patron of the arts and significant contributor to opera, symphomy and ballet in California and Utah. The Emma Eccles Jones Foundation has been a source of philanthropy in Utah.